If we were having coffee this weekend, I’d have a lot to tell you. Since the fall semester of school started this past week, things have been a little quieter than usual around this blog space. It’s all due to business going back to normal though — work at the office from 8:00 am – 4:30 pm, then I’m either heading off to campus for class or home to do my online schoolwork. These are the times when it feels like I’ve barely got the time to eat a good meal or to bed at a reasonable hour, much less do anything beyond that like get a good blog post written out. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t still like to try! But truthfully, the first week back has been a little bit of a roller coaster. Let me fill you in.

From what I had read, I was under the impression that our instructors should have had everything uploaded and available on Canvas (which Ivy Tech is just adopting this year in favor of the old Blackboard learning platform) by last Saturday. My math instructor (whose class isn’t even held online) stuck to that and had our syllabus and several other pieces of information ready to go on that day. My other class however, network communications, got off to a little bit of a rough start. None of the class materials were made available until late Sunday evening, which was already upsetting to me personally, since I genuinely appreciate and look forward to the opportunity to work ahead that we’re normally given the weekend before the first day. Furthermore, an access code that we needed in order to take a practice quiz in the first module wasn’t made available to the class at all until halfway through the week. And the only response I got from asking the instructor for assistance was to read the directions given in each module carefully.

Truthfully, I nearly had a meltdown. I read over the module’s directions at least 12 times looking for this access code that didn’t exist. I wanted to cry. I’m paying a lot of money and spending a lot of time on this class and my education. The last thing I needed to do to contribute to either one of those things was get a big fat zero on a practice quiz that I was never able to access. I did everything I could to try and put it out of my mind until at least the middle of the week. At which point, I would try contacting the department chair instead.

The following Tuesday after work, I went to my first math class of the semester. If you didn’t already know, I struggle a lot with math. I took a remedial math course last semester that didn’t even actually count towards my GPA because I did so terribly on the entrance exam. And even in that remedial course, I barely squeaked by with a passing grade. Needless to say, I wasn’t looking forward to beginning this class which would undoubtedly be much more difficult and would count toward my GPA. But instead of leaving the class with a headache, I was instead pleasantly surprised! The instructor is an actual doctor who teaches math to middle and high school students during the day, which is perfect for me. It means that she actually knows what she’s talking about and she’s used to explaining it in a manner in which young, uneducated minds are able to comprehend it. And I was able to comprehend it as well! I understood everything that we reviewed and went over during the first week of class. Crazy for me to say that about anything math-related, but it’s true!

Then something interesting happened by the end of the week. My networking class received a few class announcements from the department chair. He gave us the access code we were missing for the practice quiz that I couldn’t access, and also made the maybe-not-so-surprising announcement that our original instructor was no longer going to be teaching the class. They are currently lining up a replacement to take over for him. I don’t know what’s going on with the old instructor, and I hate to think that he may have lost his job because that’s awful for anyone, but I can’t say that I’m not relieved to know that someone else is taking the reigns. Hopefully it’ll prevent me from having another near-meltdown over this class anytime in the near future!

In the near future, I’m planning on just keeping up with assignments and studying for tests. I’m very excited for Thanksgiving this year however — it’ll be the longest break I’ve had from both work and school in a long time. I’m considering traveling out to see my sister and nephew in southeast Kansas during said break but I could honestly just use like a week-long nap. Oy…

But hey, since this is #WeekendCoffeeShare time, tell me about what all of you have been up to! Hit me up in the comments below or on either the Talk or Contact pages!

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